Ariga: Poetry: Poetry by Karen Alkalay-Gut: LIZ MAGNES PLAYS GERSHWIN IN TEL AVIV (and I scribble)

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LIZ MAGNES PLAYS GERSHWIN IN TEL AVIV (and I scribble) by Karen Alkalay-Gut

1. SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

She plays Gershwin as if
the longing for a dream
come true
could be
divided into pieces
and then
brought together
into something greater

like the fact of hunger
creating its own banquet

from vast
world
angst
to pretty little
longing, tinkling like wan
oriental Aladdin wishing
for light
out
of the cave.

2 EMBRACABLE YOU

I am dreaming
of holding you
even in this formal place
even as we all sit
at a concert
in our suits

[suddenly I must remove
my jacket even though
the air is chill]

I would start
with light
fingertip touches
at the side of your neck
where your hand now
seems to reach to
where you skin seems
to have grown wild
with hunger

You are already hearing
my voice in your ear
even as you dream
my touch

and you feel no choice
but to come
to Mama
do

3 NASHVILLE NIGHTINGALE

Where do
birds from the South
fly in the winter of their dreams?

I watch you
light and glowing
fulfilled
and still hungry
like me
to need
the approval
of all the room

Jittery fingers
mixing jolting barrelhouse
with Ethiopian melodies
sweet pickings
inside the piano
still
like the tongueless Prochne
weeping her fate
weeping her fate
weeping her fate
to all who will hear

4. STRIKE UP THE BAND

When Johnny

So much
has been lost
to them
to us

I hear you say
what you never think
when we speak

that as long as there is soul

there is hope
and a reason
to strike up the band

5 SOON

Do people still
begin with deep glances
and wine and a fireside

and dream
of holding
each other forever

My whole body
remembers
as if
it happened once
and is happening to me
now though
my mind remembers

6 FASCINATING RHYTHM

What if
you made music
from the explosions in the street
of Tel Aviv and the bombs falling
in a village in Lebanon
in some kind of pattern
if you are wild enough
to compute all
the factors.

Drop
some real words
and nonsense
here and there
just for the
measure of it
like beads
on the hammers
in the piano

now last
for syllables
letters
become mantras
on their own

7 I have a dream

still
what ever the newspapers say
what ever they wake me with
on the radio
I keep dreaming
the same dream

At the end
all my quarrels with myself
stroke my thighs
and remind me
that I am a woman
whose body betrays
and whose heart,
oh, whose heart,
beats to music as if
it were the first time.

Karen Alkalay-Gut teaches Victorian poetry at Tel Aviv University but in her own poems prefers a more direct approach than the subjects of her academic concerns. She is "always interested" in reader reactions to her poetry and can be emailed to Karen Alkalay-Gut

Previous Poems by Karen Alkalay-Gut at Ariga

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